


Hold On to Me as We Go

by basicallymonsters



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blow Jobs, Domestic Fluff, First Time, Friendship/Love, Frottage, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Nightmares, Secondary Blue/Gansey, TRK spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 11:45:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6904645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basicallymonsters/pseuds/basicallymonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It’s like they’re enjoying some fantastic beginners luck, but they don’t actually know how the game is played...</em>
</p>
<p>Revised relationships come from the settling dust of unmaking, and Ronan and Adam try to find a balance between grief and joy, love and sex, friendship and occasional hand kissing. They navigate first times and promises and a feeling like magic - even when they're forest-less and wide awake. </p>
<p>(Pre-epilogue)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold On to Me as We Go

Adam wakes with the first gasp of sunrise through the windows, watered down grey light that sputters past grime and high stacks of clutter.

His eyes follow the line of his own outstretched arm to where Ronan is spread out beside him.

He’s still asleep, though his brow is furrowed and his hands are fisted in the sheets. Adam had tried his best to curve his body into the foot of space between them, a question mark made from bones and dipping brows. Ronan hadn’t even touched him, though he had seemed hollowly relieved when Adam stayed, handing him a clean t-shirt and smiling tiredly.

Now he looks as fitful as Adam feels, but he did manage sleep, and for a newly orphaned insomniac, that’s something. Adam wants to take the credit, but he thinks maybe exhaustion is a more powerful incentive than his own fumbling comfort.

He wants very much to smooth the crease from Ronan’s forehead. As soon as he’s named the compulsion though, it crumbles in his hands, an indulgence he’s not sure he can have. 24 hours ago he had felt clean and soft, like something freshly laundered; as if he’d gone through some sort of lulling transformation and come out the other side new.

When he had kissed Ronan, uncertainty had been neatly pocketed, and he’d let himself follow whims to the join of his neck and shoulder, the lines of his back, his plush bottom lip. He had approached Ronan as more of an art project than a math problem, and his mind had been blissfully empty.

Today made that sort of tenderness seem like rashness, made simplicity seem like a joke.

Ronan stirs violently, his eyelids jerking back as if by force. Adam’s gaze flickers down to his hands, and he’s relieved to find them empty.

Ronan catches sight of him, and he looks surprised for a moment before settling into the well worn grooves of wariness.

“You stayed.”

Adam’s head dips gently in acknowledgement. “Where would I go?”

He wasn’t going to leave his newly resurrected best friend and Ronan — whatever Ronan was to him — to stew in their confused grief alone.

Blue had had the same idea, but Maura had wholeheartedly disagreed. _Look I know he’s kissable now, Blue, but you need your own bed and at least 16 kinds of herbal teas before you go galavanting off to find your next king or bury your next body._

It was, Adam thought, in slightly poor taste to bring up such fresh wounds, but he was not a Sargent. Mother and daughter had embraced tearfully shortly after she’d spoken, the occupants of Fox Way setting down toys and cards and bundles of herbs and converging in comfort.

Ronan looks grey, his eyes hollowed out and dull, and he’s still a bit grimy from tears and dirt and blood. He’s staring again. Adam’s suddenly aware of the actually quite breakable space between them, and the muffled sound of a phone conversation just outside. This thing they have is so tremulous and strange.

He reaches out a stiff hand and touches Ronan’s face.

“You look terrible,” he whispers. Ronan snorts, and then looks mildly ill at having found anything funny at a time like this.

“Strangely, I forgot to tell the demon to pretty up my unmaking. I would’ve made a wicked corpse though.”

Adam’s everything clenches. The memory of raw gasps and bound hands is like wet cement he’s just found himself stuck in.

“Would there have been anything left?” He asks, hoarse.

Ronan looks angry, but Adam can see the unnerved outline behind the window dressing. “It was a fucking joke, Parrish. Laugh.”

“I’m in stitches,” Adam says, deadpan, and his fingers return to Ronan’s face, just below his jaw. Just above his mottled purple neck.

“Don’t—” Ronan says, catching his fingers, “say what I think you’re going to say.”

Adam feels a flame of something faintly pleased lick at his worry. _Known_.

“I am, though,” Adam insists, skirting the actual apology awkwardly.

“You don’t need to be, it’s not like you were at the fucking wheel, that was all _It_ ,” he says darkly.

“I should’ve—“

“Shut,” Ronan says, “the fuck up.” And then he brings Adam’s hand to his mouth again, and kisses his palm so softly that Adam almost flinches.

Adam thinks they’ll have to talk about this — _them_ , probably, at some point. But the faint sweetness of it is like an aftertaste, spoiled by ripping loss. He’s not worried about whatever they have, but he is worried about Ronan himself, the way he wears his own pain with the spikes turned outward. Avoiding the sting of it, but cutting others if they get too close. Adam thinks he might want to get too close. (He thinks maybe he already is.)

“Ronan.” He considers offering condolences for his mother, or Cabeswater, or Noah, thinks about the way loss brings some people together. Ronan looks up at him, and he knows that’s not how it’s going to be for them.

He kisses him. He doesn’t really think about it, just steps out into the downpour and feels the bite of that simplicity like something cleansing and hot.

Ronan opens his mouth immediately, pulls him close like you might heave a comforter over your cold body.

They’re creatures of action, the both of them, and this is the least helpless either of them have felt in hours.

Adam reaches up to cup the velvety scrape of his head, tracing down to the tendons in his neck, the lovely strain of them. He licks, dirty, over the roof of his mouth, and feels Ronan waver.

He thinks, for a horrible second, that Ronan might cry while they’re making out. But he pulls back and holds the back of his hand over his wet mouth instead.

“I’m not going back to Aglionby.”

It’s about the last thing Adam expected him to say, and he raises both eyebrows.

“Okay.”

“I’m serious,” Ronan insists.

“Okay,” Adam insists back.

“Good.” Ronan settles back into the mattress. “I’m going to have the Barns. If nothing else, I’m—“ he closes his eyes. “I’m having my home. I’ll dream a new Cabeswater. I’ll dream Noah back, if I have to.”

Adam hums, surprised that Ronan is doing something that looks an awful lot like opening up.

“He wouldn’t be the same, Ronan, you know that. He wouldn’t really be here,” he says.

Ronan looks at him sharply. “He never was really here. He was the stain of a person. The exit wound.”

Adam narrows his eyes. “Is this helping you?”

“Maybe it fucking is,” Ronan bites, but his eyes close again.

“We should check on Gansey,” Adam says suddenly. Ronan doesn’t move, but the set of his mouth changes.

“The boy who lived? Yeah, alright.” He sits up, wincing, and runs a hand over his face. “You first. I’ve gotta scrub my almost death from my body.”

Adam nods mechanically, sliding from Ronan’s unmade bed and making for the door.

“Hey Parrish.”

He stops with his hand on the door knob.

“Your morning breath is despicable,” he says, mouth harshly curled.

“Yeah well you bled on me. Neither of us is the paragon of hygiene right now.”

Ronan goes back to busily unbuttoning his pants and shucking his shirt, and Adam half smiles as he pushes the door open.

Monmouth is startlingly bright for 6 AM, the windows vast enough that the sun is unhindered. He wanders through the hazy colourless light and feels… nothing. Not a whispering forest or shout of grief. He is briefly, perfectly still.

“Gansey,” he calls softly, looking for a rumpled head at a desk or buried in pillows, but the response comes from behind him.

“Adam,” Gansey says warmly, head poked out from the kitchen/bathroom/laundry. He looks bright and awake, drawn in starker lines than the space around him.

“Jane’s coming. Coffee’s on.”

Adam bobs his head faintly. He doesn’t question the earliness of the hour or Gansey’s frankly cheery countenance, it is a question in a series of questions so ridiculous that this one barely registers.

“How’re you feeling?” Adam asks. Gansey shrugs.

“About as can be expected.”

A fancy cop out. Adam frowns. “Do you feel any different? Like there’s a forest inside you? Like death is encroaching?”

Gansey frowns, considering. “I feel very lucky to be alive, mostly. And I suppose… a little scattered. As one often is after a sleepless month and quite a few shocks to the system.”

“Including literal death,” Adam adds helpfully.

“How could I forget. How’s Ronan?”

As if summoned, Ronan wrenches his door open and stalks past them, a towel flung over his shoulder. He slams the bathroom door behind him.

“Showering,” Adam says wryly.

Gansey raises an eyebrow. “Is he…”

“Caught in a downward spiral that could end in his death or someone else’s? Yeah, surprisingly, I don’t think so. He still has the strength to insult me, so I suppose that’s a good sign.”

Gansey moves to lean against the doorframe, pushing up his glasses and rubbing his eyes with one hand.

“I’ve… never seen him like that,” Gansey says. Adam doesn’t have to ask to know he means the tears, the shaking, the blank surface.

“I think it’s good. He’s different. His grief is different because he’s different.”

Gansey regards him, cleaning his glasses methodically on the hem of his orange polo.

“I think you have something to do with that,” Gansey says softly. Adam purses his lips.

“He dug himself out, I didn’t even pick up a shovel.”

Gansey hmm’s like he disagrees. “So you guys are…?”

“That,” Adam says, “is the last thing you need to worry about right now.”

The door behind them rattles open and Blue tumbles in with a purple thermos that looks too big for one person and a shirt that looks like it’s made from bright pink ace bandages.

She stops short at the sight of them. “Alright, team meeting, everyone bring it in.”

She drops her bag and sets the thermos carefully on a wobbling stack of books, (comfort tea compliments of her mother, she explains) and then she folds herself onto Gansey’s mattress.

Gansey and Adam exchange silent looks, and then cross to meet her. Gansey slips into the space beside her at the headboard and takes her hand, Adam perches at the foot of the bed.

“Where’s number four?” Blue says, and then frowns. Four of them. Henry home for damage control at Litchfield, Noah gone.

Adam clears his throat. “Shower.”

Blue makes a face. “You mean he wallowed in his own blood all night?”

Adam shrugs. Blue levels a look at him. “You’ve got some. Just there,” she points at her own cheek and Adam reaches up. His fingers come away flaked with black blood.

“Oh,” he says.

Gansey and Blue look at each other, and then it’s like they remember all at once that they’re alive and in love and next to each other in a bed. His hand comes up to trace her cheekbone and Adam looks away.

“I can’t believe we’re alive,” Blue says after a long moment.

“Not all of us are,” Ronan says from the doorway, wrapped in a towel, looking damp and pathetic.

He doesn’t wait for a response, just shoulders into his room and slams another door. Blue’s the only one who flinches. She doesn’t look surprised, though.

“Okay, you know what, I’m not even going to call him out, I’m just glad he’s alive.” She kicks her socked feet out from underneath her and Adam’s eyes catch on the angry red zigzags.

He feels exactly the same way — he can’t find it in himself to be properly angry with Ronan when every moment he’s still speaking is a thundering relief.

“He lost more than any of us,” Gansey says and the other two stare, incredulous.

They speak all at once:

“You _died_.” “You lost Glendower.”

They might as well be the same thing.

Gansey waves them off. “Tosh. I’m breathing, and magic is alive and well.”

Adam starts to protest, but Ronan emerges from his room again, wearing a t-shirt that clings wetly to his chest.

He sits next to him, close enough that Adam feels the flushed heat of the shower on him.

“Alright, so. I feel like we should debrief,” Blue starts. “My mom filled in some blanks for me but, as far as I know. Gansey’s back for good. Noah’s… he’s gone for good.” Her voice goes wobbly, and Adam wants to hold her hand. He wants to hug Gansey until he feels real to the touch. He wants to lay his head on Ronan’s chest and feel his heart beat.

“Do we know why?” Gansey asks, his voice gentle.

She shakes her head. “Calla said she could… I don’t know, clear the air later. There’s all this stuff about sacrifice and time and change, but I couldn’t… I needed to be here.”

They sit in thick silence for a minute, swallowing that information. Noah’s door is closed and Adam has the sudden thought that no one should be allowed to open it.

“And Cabeswater’s…”

“Gone,” Adam says hollowly.

“Nah, it’s right here,” Ronan shoves Gansey by the side of his head in the Lynch equivalent of a hair ruffle.

Adam blinks at them. He remembers Ronan telling him, brokenly, about dreamed epi-pens and a fear so strong he could smell it.

“I suppose I owe you a life debt. Your creation bringing me back and all.” Gansey smiles.

Ronan shakes his head, looking at Adam. “It was Parrish’s idea. A sacrifice for a sacrifice.”

Adam doesn’t let go of his gaze, even as Gansey makes some joke at him, trying to buoy the dismal mood.

“So now what?” Blue asks, hugging her own legs and looking lost.

“Now anything,” Gansey replies, eyes bright with adventure, though there’s nothing to be found anymore.

Blue looks at Gansey, eyes wet, their hands still tangled. Adam lets himself look at Ronan. _Anything_.

_____

It’s late when he starts the long drive back to the Barns, but it’s nearly a habit by now. He signals left instead of the right to St. Agnes, pops gum in his mouth to stay awake, and feels warm all the way through at the thought of a long night and lazy morning with Ronan.

It’s a little scary how much going home to him feels like muscle memory. They’re a few weeks deep in this relationship and they haven’t really labelled it, haven’t really spoken about it at all. Ronan’s all but confessed his love, but they haven’t said the word boyfriend yet, haven’t even told anyone beyond Gansey and Blue.

Ronan’s been alternating between furious joy and raucous grief. Adam rides the wave between the two, waits to be kicked out, but rarely is. Ronan treats him like a particular kind of privilege, holds him as close as he thinks he’s allowed, lets Adam unearth him piece by piece.

The more they’re together the more Adam feels like he’d been submerged in something thick and cloying all his life, and he’s just now breathing fresh air.

He knows things he can’t un-know now; like the way Ronan looks after he’s actually slept through the night, dulled and sweet and throbbing like a cavity. The way he cries like everything is still being undone around him, like the demon is still inside. His hands on Adam’s face, his hip, the back of his thigh. The weight of Ronan on top of him. The stupid sight of him wearing gum boots and a fleece at 5 AM, animals following him through the endless green of his property.

They spend entire days together, and Adam waits to feel like he’s wasting his time, but he never does.

Ronan smiles at him and Adam considers skipping first period, which has never happened before.

They fight sometimes, over Ronan’s spectacular anger or school or the magic Adam doesn’t have anymore. But after they make up for the fifth time, Adam realizes that they’re not particularly breakable, and that they wouldn’t be them if they weren’t clashing at least a little.

Most of the time though, it’s so good, _too_ good. Easy and wonderful in a way that tempts him away from needed rest or his sixteenth extracurricular. Work is Adam’s North star, but it’s as if Ronan flipped on a lamp — his light is easier, closer, distracting.

And Ronan is so tactile it’s overwhelming; Adam would probably never stop touching him if it weren’t for school and work and social convention.

They’re still getting used to it, though. It’s like they’re enjoying some fantastic beginners luck, but they don’t actually know how the game is played.

The sign welcoming him to Singer’s Falls appears in the hondayota’s headlights, and Adam accelerates gently.

He pulls up through the winding driveway to the Barns 10 minutes later, navigating the sudden hard turns and dips in the earth all the way to the space beside a sleek BMW.

Ronan’s already out on the porch, dressed in ripped jeans and a dark plaid shirt, his arms crossed and his expression helplessly pleased.

“Hey,” Adam calls, slamming the car door and picking over gravel and weeds to meet him. He wraps his arms loosely around his neck, and Ronan smiles sharply against his mouth.

“I’ve got something to show you,” he says, extracting himself from his embrace and turning on the spot.

“Something,” Adam echoes, faintly skeptical. Ronan glances at him, eyes rolling.

“It’s not bad.”

“And it’s not Opal 2.0, right, I can’t support another kid right now.”

“Fuck no, two annoying ass animal kids are enough,” he scoffs, crouching down at the front door. Adam hovers awkwardly behind him, torn (as he often is nowadays) between exasperation and bright happiness.

Ronan reaches for Adam’s hand, bringing it to the door knob and holding it there. It glows hot in his hand for a second, and then the door swings open.

Ronan grins up at him, exceptionally pleased. There’s a smudge of grease along his cheekbone.

“… what,” Adam says. Ronan rolls his eyes.

“It only opens for you or me now. Or I guess Opal and Matthew could get in too. Declan has to knock though, fuck him,” he says good-naturedly.

“You mean like… are you giving me a key to your house?”

Ronan looks momentarily caught off guard. “No! What? No. It-it just. Makes things faster, and no one needs to remember keys or anything.” He stands, closing the door hastily behind him.

“I can change the door knob back if you fucking want, Parrish, you’re just here all the damn time, and I thought—“

Adam catches his face in both hands and holds him still.

“It’s nice. You’re being nice, that’s what this feeling is,” Adam teases. Ronan relaxes.

“I won’t have you ruining my reputation, dickweed. Before you came along I dreamed cool shit, like, I dunno, cars and booze—“

“And brothers and hand lotion and baby birds, yeah I know. I’ve ruined you.”

“You have,” Ronan says softly, hands coming up to cup the ones on his own face. Adam’s chest swims, and his smile twitches up a notch.

“So I’m like. The joint owner of a several million dollar estate, huh?” Adam muses.

“I guess all you had to do was sleep your way to the top,” Ronan replies, grinning.

Adam flushes at his ears and sensitive neck, and Ronan does a bit too, and then they’re stumbling in through their magic door and into their magic home.

“Opal?” Adam asks, lazily scanning the room for a messy blonde mop or skittering hooves.

“Out back, dicking around with the fire pit.”

“You left an unattended child with a _fire_?” Adam asks, eyes wide. Ronan gives him a look.

“No, Parrish, I’m not a fucking idiot, there’s no actual fire. She’s just obsessed with the charcoal and wood, I think she’s using them to draw.”

Adam’s pulse settles, and he grabs Ronan’s hand as they wind through the dream clutter to the kitchen.

“Hate to break this to you, Adam, but. She’s not actually yours,” he says, in this pseudo soap opera voice that makes Adam smirk.

“She might as well be, she holds my hand and tests my patience enough.”

“With those criteria, _I_ would be your kid,” Ronan points out. Adam makes a face.

“Gross, Lynch. Never mind.”

Ronan flips on the heat on his way into the kitchen, asks the lights politely to turn on, and they do, bobbing fixtures that don’t appear to be attached to anything.

He bustles, a bit, when he’s comfortable, Adam’s noticed. Little farmhouse tasks that look easy in his sure hands: fixing things, feeding animals, watering plants, toasting toast for Adam, pouring lucky charms for opal.

“Dinner?” Ronan asks, warming his hands at the preheating oven.

Adam raises an eyebrow and Ronan amends, “Okay, bagel bites and milk?”

“Sure,” Adam says, hopping up on a free bit of counter space and watching Ronan slam the freezer door.

“So. Hey, c’mere,” Adam kicks at his shins until Ronan grunts and moves towards him.

He pulls him in with both feet so that he’s held loosely between his legs.

“We’re dating, right?” Adam asks. Ronan jerks back, surprised.

“Yeah? Did you think—“

Adam can see him working himself up, but he doesn’t let him move from the cage of his arms and legs.

“Obviously I want to, Ronan, I’m just making sure, like, if someone asks, I can say you’re my… boyfriend. You are, right?”

Ronan huffs a breath, pushes his face into Adam’s so they’re cheek to cheek.

“You know… you know I want that.”

“I know that logically, but most people discuss it like. Before they give out magic touch ID to their farm and start raising a goat child together.”

“Most people,” Ronan echoes, a little harsh, in his ear.

Adam pulls back, lifts Ronan’s chin with cold fingers. “Boyfriends, yes or no?”

Ronan’s face goes a delicate shade of pink. “Yes.”

Adam kisses him, chaste, thumbs stroking outward from either cheekbone.

“Good to know,” he whispers. Ronan kisses him again, winding his arms around Adam’s back with the Barns heating up around them.

____

Somehow he ends up on top of Ronan, who’s propped up against his headboard at Monmouth, making all these helpless little noises that end in Adam’s name.

It’s heady, kissing like this, knowing everything he does to Ronan is going to be his first time.

Possibility stretches over every plane of him, and Adam ends up sloppy and eager, trying to apply every trick he’s ever picked up, trying to find the best way to touch all of him at once.

It’s the most honest he’s seen Ronan, his mouth messy and his eyes startlingly clear. He looks like a higher resolution version of himself, like the way he is at the Barns. Adam’s almost frantic knowing that he’s the one making him look like that.

He bunches both hands in the fabric of Ronan’s shirt and watches him react, always feeling Ronan’s responses more acutely than his own pleasure, watching for the minute details of his changing face, his hammering heartbeat.

He never moves until Adam does, and he can see the twitch of restraint behind his eyes, the lingering uncertainty. Adam kisses it away, rocking down into him and feeling his gasp before he hears it. He taps two fingers at Ronan’s waist, and at his nod Adam has his shirt halfway off before Ronan can even raise his arms.

Freed, Ronan palms his hips, thumbing along the jut of bone there and making a noise like a sob into his mouth. Adam breaks away and kisses softly at the underside of his jaw, waiting for Ronan’s breath to level out.

“You good?” he murmurs.

Ronan kisses his hairline and mumbles a yes, and Adam’s tenderness turns open and lazy, mouthing over Ronan’s adam’s apple, his collarbone, the join of his shoulder and neck. He bites down, and Ronan says his name so brokenly that Adam laughs, breathless and dizzy.

“God, Ronan, let me —“

“ _Yes._ ”

Adam pulls back, brow raised, flushed down to his chest. “Yeah?”

“Parrish, I would do whatever you fucking asked me to do right now,” he says, voice low and serious.

Adam grounds himself, hands splayed out on either side of his neck, fingers squeezing into ink.

“I want you to want it too,” he says gently, and Ronan licks his lips hastily.

“I want it. I want whatever you’ll give me.”

“I want to blow you,” Adam breathes, “I want to make you feel so good.” His voice is a little wobbly but his eyes are forward. It feels like he’s been burning away for months, and this is the ashy crux of what he wants. He’s attracted to Ronan in the same gasping way he wanted Blue, fervent and painful.

_And requited_ , he reminds himself, resting one of his hands on Ronan’s stomach just above his waistband.

Ronan’s hands are shaking, but his voice is clear when he says, “God, Adam. _Yes_.”

Adam kisses him immediately, open and deep, one hand slatted along his jaw, and the other fumbling with the button on his jeans. When his hand sinks in over his underwear, Ronan makes a ragged sound, hugging Adam close, face pressed into neck.

“These dreams are getting realer and realer,” Ronan says, somewhere on the breathless edge of a laugh.

“Did you dream about this?” Adam asks into the skin of his cheek, hand stroking over his dick in the fraction of space between them. The idea is something impossibly blurry and sexy, the thought of Ronan, right here, coming awake with Adam’s taste in his mouth.

Ronan pulls back enough to look at him, brow furrowed. “You know I have.”

“This?” Adam asks, desperate, moving down his body until his face is level with the gaping zipper of his pants.

“ _Adam_ ,” he grits, with the bite of a curse.

He jerks the jeans off of his hips and Ronan allows him to tug them from each leg, his thighs quivering and the outline of his cock pressed snugly into black underwear.

He mouths over him before he can think about it, holding Ronan’s hips in both hands and feeling the wetness of the head, the heat of it.

Something like panic jackknifes through him, but it’s just the urge to taste, the thrill of control, warm and thick where panic would be cold.

He hooks his thumbs in Ronan’s underwear and pulls them down to mid-thigh, smoothing up his thighs against the grain of the hair there.

Ronan struggles to his elbows and looks down at him, red down the column of his neck, naked except the roll of boxers about his legs. _Unmade_.

Adam sucks in a breath and looks down at where he’s straining up towards his navel, thick and red and leaking, god, fucking everywhere.

“Ronan,” he says thickly.

Ronan jerks forward and grabs Adam’s face in both hands, kissing him with too much tongue and bruising lip, and Adam can feel him pulsing between them, his cock flush with Adam’s bare stomach.

“Please, let me, Ronan, I’ve got to—“ Adam babbles nonsensically, mouth half busy with Ronan’s, hand snaking between them to jerk him once. Ronan throws his head back, narrowly avoiding knocking into Adam.

He falls back flat on the mattress, the planes of his stomach straining, but his shoulders loose and his mouth open. He shoots Adam a look after another moment of slack jawed staring.

“Are you gonna suck my dick, or not?” His bravado is imperfect, but charming, and Adam quells a hopeless smile.

He narrows his eyes instead, leaning over and — without preamble — sucking him into his mouth.

Ronan spasms, hands in Adam’s hair before he can even acclimate to the first beat of sensation.

And then it’s like a montage of impressions: Ronan’s hands self consciously relaxing with every bob of Adam’s head, the bitter taste, a stretch just on the right side of too much, and the little panting ‘yeah’s from above him.

Adam pulls off, mouth wet, grinning. “God. God.”

“Parrish,” Ronan whines, and Adam can see him twitching wetly where he left him, aching between his thighs.

“Hey,” Adam says, for no particular reason. He keeps expecting this to be weird, but for every layer of desire he peels back there is another, stronger one waiting.

“You’re barely gonna have to touch me,” Adam whispers, only mildly embarrassed. Ronan looks down him and back up, his smile incredulous.

“Well hold out, Parrish. I want a turn.”

Adam laughs. “I thought _this_ was your turn.”

“Yeah well you don’t know how long I’ve been trying not to want this. I wanna see everything. All of you.”

Adam responds with a lick over the length of him, kissing over the head, stroking tenderly at the base. He’s starting to feel hard enough that it hurts, trapped in denim, pinched by the weight of his own body.

Ronan hauls him up again, kissing him once, filthy, and then jostling them so that Adam is breathless, looking up at the ceiling. He disappears for a second, and when he comes back, he’s completely naked, looking wholly unattainable even as he plasters his body along Adam’s.

“I never thought I could be awake and feel…” he trails off, bites into the hollow of Adam’s throat, and rocks upright, eyes bright and wicked. “… powerful.”

Adam’s jeans are loose, and threadbare, and they come off with little negotiating. Ronan works his boxers off of him in the same motion, and then he looks down at him, a complicated look on his face.

Adam reaches up to cup his face, tries not to come at the weight of him, the velvety slide of skin.

“Are you with me?”

“I can’t believe you’re letting me…” Ronan trails off, hands absently mapping Adam’s chest and ribs.

“I’m not _letting_ you anything, asshole. I’ve been a pretty active participant.” He thrusts upwards, punctuation to his point, and Ronan’s hands still on his torso. He looks rapturous, head tilted to the ceiling. They could never do this in St. Agnes, Adam considers. It would be unfair to worship Ronan so near another god.

Ronan moves with him, after a second, hips slotting together again and again. Adam watches the sinuous roll of him, an echo of something even more intimate, and he can’t help the way his hands flex up onto his hips, guiding him into a slow grind.

Ronan’s honest to god biting his lips raw, completely debauched, and he reaches down to circle them both with his fist, jerking out of rhythm.

Adam says his name, and then, louder, warning, “I’m gonna—“

Ronan looks undone by the thought of it, he’s nodding, speeding up furiously. “Me too _._ ”

There’s a tricky slide, Ronan’s thumb pressing into the head of Adam’s cock, and a wave of heat that feels like it could have come from either of them, or like there isn’t quite a boundary to Adam’s body beyond the one Ronan is enforcing with his weight.

When Adam comes, it is with the curious disconnect of scrying: a white kind of bliss that slows his thoughts and unhinges his body. He faintly feels the spray of Ronan coming across his chest a moment later, and then the full weight of his body folding over him.

Adam feels suspiciously awake.

He strokes over Ronan’s hair, a little longer now, and soft to the touch.

“You’re… very good at that,” Ronan says quietly, and Adam grins at the ceiling.

“Am I?”

Ronan huffs, but Adam holds him close, enjoying the humidity between them, the slide.

He kisses a purpling mark on Ronan’s neck, and then warm at the hinge of his jaw, and then moves to his open mouth—

“You were ok.”

Ronan pushes his face away, peeling their bodies apart. “Fuck you, you came first,” he says, petulant.

“Oh that’s how this is going to be?”

Adam follows him, straddling him in one fluid motion. “I could make you come first,”

“This is the weirdest taunt I’ve ever been a part of, what, am I going to say no? Please Adam, don’t touch me, god that would be the _worst_ —”

“Stop talking,” Adam says, but he’s smiling, he can’t help it. “You wanna go again?”

Ronan’s already breathing hard, or he’s _still_ breathing hard, and Adam grazes his sides, thumbs his nipples.

“Adam. I would happily never leave this room again.”

“And leave the farm unattended?” Adam asks, faux scandalized.

“I’m sure it would take care of itself. Find its own equilibrium or whatever. Doesn’t nature just sort its shit out?”

“‘Equilibrium’, wow, talk dirty to me,” Adam teases, and Ronan flushes. It’s comforting to know he can provoke whatever reaction he wants from him, a blush or a shiver or a gasp. To have every impossible facet of Ronan Lynch underneath him, unmasked.

He hitches Ronan’s thighs up over his own, and watches his face go slack.

____

“What do you know about the Burkian theory of the sublime?”

Adam looks up, bemused. “Is this a school thing or a Gansey thing?”

“The latter,” Gansey says, spinning his journal so that it’s facing Adam.

“I’ve been doing some research about sublimity and gothicism, and the way the supernatural manifests itself. Particularly in reference to witches and seers and psychics, for obvious reasons,” he continues. He’s flapping his hands distractedly; a lazy conductor who knows his orchestra is following along with or without him.

“And?” Adam prompts.

“And, nothing. I’m just trying to see if there’s any particular system for who actually _sees_ and who is— Jane! Fancy seeing you here,” he breaks off, looping an arm around Blue’s waist as soon as she’s within reach.

“At my place of work? Sure is, a downright coincidence. Can I get you miscreants anything?”

“The pleasure of your company?” Gansey says, muffled into her neck.

“No dice. I have an hour and a half left, but if you’re very, very patient, you can have me for the rest of the night.”

Gansey flushes gently, unruffled but pleased. If Ronan were here, he would make a joke about prostitution a la their first meeting. Adam smiles to himself, just a twitch, but they both catch it.

“Something funny, smirky?” Blue teases, reaching out as if to pinch his cheek. He bats her away.

“Just thinkin’. Has anyone ever told you two you’re sickening?”

“Ronan, a few times.” Gansey grimaces. Blue’s face goes brightly knowing.

“Is that your deal, Adam? Missing your bf?”

“No,” Adam says, too firmly.

“Two days apart too many?” she laughs.

Ronan’s in DC visiting his brothers, and Adam has slept in St. Agnes alone for three nights, trying to enjoy the extra rest and coming up empty and cold.

“Like you guys could last two hours,” Adam retorts, half smiling.

“I could last two _weeks_ , Parrish. He’s only slowing me down, if I’m honest,” she says, patting Gansey’s cheek condescendingly.

He shrugs, seems happy to be close to her. “As long as she comes back.”

Adam fake gags, toying with the rolled cutlery set and trying not to focus on the empty seat beside him.

Blue flits away for a second to refill someone’s drink, then leans back over their booth distractedly.

“When’s he getting back, anyway?” she asks, looking at Adam kindly, like she knows how twitchy he is, really, and gets it. None of them spend much time apart lately, since they were almost apart for good.

“About, um. 36 hours,” Adam says quietly, and she cups his face for a fleeting second.

“We’ll distract you until then.”

“I don’t need…” But she’s already gone. He watches her flouncing off to the kitchen, plucking a pencil from her hair to scribble down an order.

When he looks away, Gansey’s still watching after her, something pensive and pleased in the tilt of his mouth.

“What are you getting her for christmas?” Adam asks suddenly. Gansey looks startled.

“Pardon? Oh, god, I don’t know. Maybe a cellphone?”

Adam scoffs, “Yeah, if you want to get dick punched.”

Gansey makes a face. “I just thought it would be mutually beneficial. Not that the wait for a call from her landline isn’t thrilling,” he says, eyes rolling, very teenaged boy. “Why are you asking?”

Adam shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know what to get Ronan. I don’t even know where to _begin_.”

“His greatest source of joy is reckless endangerment and internet memes I don’t imagine he’d be too difficult to please,” Gansey says flatly.

“Exactly! He’s not even into material possessions! And anything he does want he can literally dream into existence, or buy with his millions and millions of dollars.”

“Does it matter? Have you ever gotten him presents before?”

“I kind of have to now, don’t I, we’ve been dating for a couple of months. Couples buy romantic things for each other, they make gestures. _We’re_ very into gestures.”

“And worse,” Adam continues, ignoring Gansey’s opening mouth, “he’s _good_ at giving me gifts! He’s kind of the best, actually, he doesn’t push it, he just… I don’t know.” He scrubs both hands over his face and leaves them there. “He has a habit of getting me exactly what I need exactly when I need it.”

Gansey taps politely on the hand muffling Adam’s voice and when Adam drops it he smiles warmly.

“That’s a relationship, Adam. That’s how it should be. Ronan doesn’t care if you get him anything, and I guarantee he’s not expecting you to follow market holiday societal convention. He’s happiest when you’re with him, just. Be with him.”

“Big talk coming from a man who’s family thinks buying affection is the most effective way of bonding,” Adam grumbles.

Gansey shrugs, unfazed. “Well. It doesn’t hurt.”

Adam leans back in the booth, letting his head thump against the vinyl. “You’re probably actually right, but I was looking more for like spray paint, or bird feed or a mix tape or something. Now I have to spend time with him.”

“Hmm, what an undertaking,” Gansey says, smirking.

They’re quiet for a moment, both happy to have reached the point where their biggest issues are what christmas presents to buy for the people they love.

Gansey goes to slide out of the booth, extending his knuckles to be bumped.

“Call him, Adam. You’re very sulky, it’s messing with morale,” he says, slipping his cellphone into Adam’s other hand and wandering off to bother Blue between tables.

Adam rolls his eyes, but flips to contacts and feels a twinge in his chest at the sight of Ronan’s name.

He sighs at himself, feeling giddy and stupid, and hits call.

____

It’s December 27th when they’re all free to celebrate. Gansey’s back from his doubtless extravagant winter cabin in some untouched corner of Europe, Blue’s finished with the marathon festivities at 300 Fox Way.

Adam had split his time between Blue and the Lynch brothers for the 25th, ping-ponging between cramped joyful tradition, with pealing shrieks of laughter and hearty thank you’s and more blubbering than he was entirely comfortable with — and intimate, casual celebrating. Celtic carols blasting, brotherly bickering on low, dreamed snow (lukewarm as a dream), and stolen kisses between the kitchen and dining room.

It was the best Christmas Adam could imagine, the most he’s understood the definition of family with the certainty of practical experience.

The 27th is their own personal second wave, their newly formed fivesome curled around the fire in the Barns. They’re revelling in hard won belonging and the fresh kind of power that comes with new friends, new relationships, new memories forming as fast as you can catalogue them.

Ronan is hot all along Adam’s side, their ankles hooked together, Adam idly toying with Ronan’s wristbands. Ronan can’t seem to keep his eyes off of his fingers tangled there.

Gansey and Blue are colluding to attach antlers to Henry’s perfect hair, and Opal is chasing Chainsaw around the kitchen, dressed in a newly gifted sweater from Ronan (He swiped an oversized Aglionby sweatshirt from the locker room) and wearing tinsel as a scarf.

There’s a mismatched pile of unopened presents laid out on the coffee table in the middle of the room, looking — ridiculously — like personal advertisements for the people who wrapped them.

Blue’s are all shredded tissue paper and big curls of ribbon, Gansey’s are catalogue perfect, Henry’s a little messy in copper wrapping, big scrawling handwriting boasting handwritten cards for each. Ronan’s are mauled with newspaper and string, and Opal’s are the same, if even sloppier. Adam’s are clean; crisp edges on simple paper, with sparkly bows that he splurged on, a little.

Blue gasps with laughter, Henry’s hair rapidly deflating under the weight of jingling red and green felt, and Opal has skidded into the living room to join in on the joke. Adam shakes his head, snorting, and Ronan tangles their hands together properly, looking soft enough to make Adam’s chest go tight.

“Alright, now that that’s sorted,” Blue laughs, tweaking a bell atop Henry’s head and leaning her full weight into Gansey’s side. “Time for the main event.” She gestures to the gifts, and the three of them pick their way over to their respective chairs. They’re all looped together and ridiculous, and they end up sitting too hard in an overstuffed chaise longue.

Opal gallops over to Adam and Ronan, still a little wary of the menace that is Blue, Gansey and Henry three eggnogs in. She curls up at their feet and Ronan snatches her cap away, which sends her into a fit of grabbing hands and noises that seem more bird than girl.

It takes them whole minutes to get settled, but eventually they’re arranged how they want, touching at least two other people at a time, inspecting tags and passing packages along until they find a home in the right hands.

Adam tells himself that this is normal, but he keeps expecting there to be a catch, something disappointed and violent. His world has been so quiet for so long.

The gift giving is dreamlike, a scene from a coming of age movie or a page ripped out of a book in a language Adam’s just now learning to read.

Opal’s gifts are mostly polished rocks, or dream things she had found and repurposed (mostly by means of biting or smashing). She had caught a handful of firefly lights and put them in a pop bottle for Adam, insisting that anyone could benefit from a night light. She gets kid stuff in return, toy cars and picture books translated into latin and a bike dreamed to accommodate her hooves.

Henry and Gansey had bought each other expensive vintage shirts for obscure bands no one had heard of; some sort of inside joke. Henry lugs an ancient textbook in, almost a handspan wide, for Gansey to peruse, and he hands Ronan a mixtape labelled “80s bops” and tells him to educate himself. He bought Adam a college care package, stationary and hoodie’s, insisting that a full-ride with early admission is nothing to sneeze at.

Gansey had not, in fact, bought Blue a phone, but instead given her his completed Glendower journal, handling it delicately as if rending his soul from his body. She goes a little misty, and then overcompensates with gruffness, and then embraces Gansey so fiercely that he sinks back into the couch. 

All of Blue’s gifts are handmade, candid photos interspersed with impressive collage work. A bow tie with a pattern of bees and flowers for Henry. Something small and knit that she tells Ronan is for Chainsaw to wear, which amuses him enormously. She slips Gansey something Adam suspects is a switchblade, like His and Hers weaponry, and whispers an explanation that makes Gansey throw his head back laughing.

Adam gives various practical, thoughtful items, a thrift store pocket watch for Gansey, a finishing touch to his grandpa aesthetic, and a bit of a joke about the ley line’s warping of time. There are a dozen hair clips he picked out at garage sales for Blue, some of which are actually very cool, old fashioned hair combs with stones on the handles.

Ronan’s gifts are wonderful, hilarious things, a skirt for Blue that sounds like rushing water when spun, streaming blues and greens. He hands her pepper spray and tells her not to hold back. Gansey gets a birthday card congratulating him on his 2nd rebirth on the ley line. His laughter turns delighted when ronan flicks something small and buzzing into the air — a second robotic bee tuned to Gansey’s command.

There are some less personal things, too: jackets and hair product and joke shot glasses, the latest season of Henry’s favourite trashy television show, good gloves for Adam, some sketches for tattoos Blue wants Ronan to get, watercolours and latin phrases, sort of a joke and sort of not at all.

Ronan hands Adam a misshapen lump of newspaper and cradles a second one in his lap, nodding Adam into action. His pulse leaps but he tamps it down.

He unveils a gorgeous conch shell, creamy and sleek, curving into an opening that looks gilded with gold. Adam shoots him a wondering look and Ronan smirks.

“Put it to your ear.”

Adam does, raising the shell to his good ear and nearly throwing it at Ronan when it plays the murder squash song at full volume.

“Jesus Ronan, do you have to be a dick at all times, I can’t—“

“Kidding,” Ronan says, lazy, overconfident in the lack of heat in Adam’s voice, the fondness in his curving mouth. He throws him the other package, and Adam nearly fumbles it.

Unwrapped, it’s an almost identical shell, pearlescent and ominous. Adam stares.

“What the _fuck_?”

“Okay, put this one to your ear,” Ronan says, and Adam winds up as if to football toss it at him, but Ronan nudges him with his feet, laughing.

“Do it, come on, you don’t trust me?”

Adam makes an incoherent ‘pah’ sound, gesturing at the mercifully silent first shell on the floor.

Ronan nudges him again and Adam’s resolve shreds through.

He raises it to his ear and it’s nothing, for a second.

And then it rushes to meet him — _the Barns_. Ravens cawing faintly, wind rustling through trees, crickets and snuffling animals, dreamed chimes and faraway laughter. It sounds so, so familiar, and something warm takes hold of all his vital organs and squeezes.

“Ronan,” he says quietly.

“Adam,” he replies, his cockiness spidering with nerves. “It’s for when you’re away.”

Adam takes his hand and presses it to his mouth.

“Thank you.”

“Gross,” Gansey says, not missing a beat. He’s wedged snugly between Blue and Henry and looking at Adam with the whole fucking world in his eyes.

Adam drags his eyes back to Ronan, who is worrying his lip and watching him handling the shell.

“I would’ve gotten you a car, but you know how you are about accepting necessary hand outs—“

“You wouldn’t have, and you know it,” Adam says, leaning into Ronan’s side and waiting for the fight to go out of him, as it always seems to when Adam’s touching enough parts of him.

“I wouldn’t have,” Ronan confirms, eyes down. “I know you.”

Adam would’ve fought him on that 3 months ago. It would’ve been a whole argument, something cruel for Ronan to claim: knowing Adam, who didn’t quite know himself yet.

Now it’s just something true.

Blue starts wiping away nonexistent tears, teasing, eyes so alive that it hurts a bit to look at her.

“Alright,” Adam sighs, reaching behind him for the last gifts of the night. “I’ll try to top that. No promises.”

He hands him an envelope, and Ronan’s face goes quizzical.

“Okay, docked marks for presentation, right off the bat,” he says, and Adam rolls his eyes.

“This isn’t a marriage certificate, is it?” Ronan jokes, and Adam scoffs.

“You wish.”

Ronan doesn’t argue, just busily rips through the envelope and upends the contents into his lap.

“What the fuck is this?” he asks, and Adam’s pulse rabbits, regret slicks his palms.

“It’s, um. A plane ticket?”

“You sending me somewhere?” Ronan asks, confused, and Adam twitches a smile.

“ _I’m_ going somewhere,” he corrects.

Ronan looks more confused by the minute. “You’re _leaving me_ for Christmas?”

Adam sighs, plucking the tickets from his hand and fanning them out.

“It’s the return ticket I’m focusing on. It’s not— I mean it’s just symbolic, college isn’t for ages. This is the return flight for next month when I scout out the city and talk to the counsellor and everything, but. It’s supposed to be…”

Ronan searches his face, over and over like he’s waiting for something to jump out at him.

“I’m coming home to you,” Adam says, leaning in, suddenly overly conscious of all their friends two feet away.

“It’s the first return ticket of many. I’m coming back.”

Ronan gets it all at once, and his face goes almost sad, like he’s feeling so much that it’s twisting all his features to find a way out.

And because he’s not good with words, he leans in, cradling Adam’s face and then following with the rest of his body, holding their faces together in that way of his, chests pressed close. Adam’s hands come up to hold onto his waist.

“Home,” Ronan says simply, voice choked with emotion, and Adam shrugs against him.

“I know it’s early…”

“Fuck you, it’s exactly on time,” Ronan says, and then pulls back, face mostly composed again.

“Oh, and,” Adam fishes in his pocket and tosses a cassette tape at Ronan. “The shittiest electronica I could find.”

Ronan beams at him. “Marry me.”

“Nah,” Adam says, and then he kisses him, quickly, on the mouth.

Blue whoops happily, and Adam catches the tail end of a flash as Henry snaps a polaroid.

“Dinner?” Gansey asks, hustling them along like a punctual host, but flushed with the rush of presents and affection.

“Shall I carve the beast?” Henry says, earnest, already making for the kitchen.

“It’s pre-cooked chicken from the supermarket,” Ronan calls after him, one arm still loosely around Adam’s shoulder.

“Even better!” Henry replies, and Blue follows him in, shaking her head. Opal has been clinging to Blue’s side ever since she gave her a cheap set of tarot cards for her own, and she follows after them both, picking cards at random and waiting for approval.

Gansey claps Ronan and Adam both on the shoulders, then walks backwards away from them.

“I’d better make sure they’re not using switchblades on our Christmas dinner,” he says, though he looks charmed at the thought of it. “Be right back.” He winks exaggeratedly.

“Does he think we’re gonna do it in the wrapping paper?” Ronan asks, looking after him with his brows raised.

“Could,” Adam starts, fisting his hands in the front of Ronan’s shirt. “Or we could go for a drive.”

“And miss gourmet rotisserie chicken and canned mixed vegetables?” Ronan tries to look dismayed but he’s _glowing,_ it’s a whole mess.

“There’ll be leftovers.”

“Lets do donuts in the snow,” Ronan says, features all lit up by firelight and excitement, and Adam groans, but he doesn’t refuse.

They end up skidding figure eights into the dreamed mountains of snow, tearing up the grass beneath and straining against seat-belts until Gansey comes out on the porch to yell at them.

Christmas dinner is significantly better doused in adrenaline, their feet knocking under the table.

____

Adam wakes at 4 AM to the bad kind of gasping right next to him, wet and panicked like someone’s breath isn’t getting all the way to their lungs. He’s groggy for all of a second, and then he sees the way Ronan’s limbs are all locked up tight, cheeks glossy with tears.

Sleep is punched out of him in the space of a breath, and he scrambles to Ronan’s side of the bed, hands flying to smooth his short curls and clasp a shaking hand. He feels tears prick at his own eyes. He hates these things that ravage Ronan’s sleep, he’s done sharing a bed with them.

“Ronan,” he whispers. He only jolts away from him, making a noise like all the air is being ripped from him at once. He tries to wrangle Ronan’s limbs so that he doesn’t knock him by accident or jerk out of the bed.

“Ronan, hey, wake up. Please.” His voice is shaking, and he hates the way Ronan’s straining against his hands like it hurts.

He finally goes still underneath him, and when Adam looks up, his eyes are open.

His relief is choking and absolute.

“Sorry,” he says, quiet enough that Adam almost misses it through the blood rushing in his hearing ear.

“Ronan, come on, don’t be.” He pulls him close, to the crook of his neck, and they try to settle their ragged breathing.

“I thought I could keep it in check, I didn’t want to—“ Ronan stops, but Adam can fill in the rest of the sentence from the look on his face: _drive you away, hurt you, make you hate me_.

“You didn’t,” Adam says firmly. “You’re okay. We’re okay.” He kisses the crown of Ronan’s head. “Was it your mom?”

Ronan shakes his head. “Gansey.”

The circle of Adam’s arms tightens. He tamps down the urge to question him about it, to throw him platitudes or empty comforts (it’s not going to be the last time, the nightmares are relentless and both of them know it).

“You wanna visit the chicks?” He asks instead, and Ronan turns his face into his chest with a sob of laughter. Ronan had dreamed 3 speckled eggs into existence a couple of weeks ago, and made a sly joke about the ‘which came first’ debate being settled. Adam had rolled his eyes and kissed his mouth, and asked him why he couldn’t dream up something useful like an incubator.

His dreams could be such joyful things and such painful reminders, and there was no warning which it would be — ribbons and softballs and puppies in bed or sickening sobs that slapped Adam awake.

Adam startles when Ronan slips out of his arms, bending to pull on jeans with the clink of a buckle and whisper of fabric.

He flips the lamp on and looks down into Adam’s squinting face. He feels like sleep is baked into him, in the corners of his eyes and the swoop of hair at his temple. Ronan smiles — a fragile, wrung out thing.

“Are you coming?”

Adam feels all the tension go out of the room, like the sharp edge of Ronan’s smile had poked a hole in it. If it’s a little put on, a little too soon, neither of them mention it.

He works himself up to his hands and knees and crawls to the edge of the bed, the comforter sagging around him. He lets his head fall forward into Ronan’s chest, feels his calloused hands come up to card through his hair. They stay that way — Adam kneeling on the mattress and Ronan wrapped around him — for a long time. When Adam’s awake enough, and Ronan has regained enough of that brittle bravado of his, they slip out of the bedroom, half dressed and pale in the moonlight.

“I can’t believe your big nightmare antidote is chickens,” Ronan says, looking at him sideways, their sides knocking in the heavy darkness of the hall.

“It got your ass out of bed, so I’m counting it as a win.”

“If you wanted to cheer me up, we definitely shouldn’t have _left_ the bed.” But there’s an edge to his voice that Adam knows is grateful. You don’t want to curl up in the place where your dream self was killed, where your best friend was cut down in front of you.

“Yeah you really set the mood with the thrashing and the heavy breathing,” Adam says. The memory of it is thick on his skin.

Ronan tenses, but his voice is carefully even when he says, “that could be sexy.”

They mutually decide to peek into Opal’s (Declan’s) room on their way downstairs, shushing each other and grinning at the picture they make — teen parents creeping out in the night. They satisfy themselves that she’s safe and asleep, and then move through the rest of the house in silence.

Adam knows the Barns now, the creaks and jutting pieces, the things that are real and the things that aren’t. Sometimes he’s amazed by how much there is to know, though it’s no surprise how quickly he’s learning — it’s as familiar as Ronan, as decipherable as latin script.

He wordlessly grabs two cans of coke from the fridge and holds the back door open, a creaky glass thing behind a bug screen. The night rushes in to greet them, cool February air and all manner of living things; breathing and calling and peering in at their maker.

Ronan follows him gratefully outside, and they stride through wet grass to the nearest barn. Instead of going inside though, Ronan clambers on top of it, briefly dropping Adam’s hand as he climbs. Adam huffs, smiles, and swings himself up by a handhold, cresting the roof in time to see Ronan’s utterly readable face, open to the sky.

There’s a smear of lighter blue spreading on the violet horizon, a haze of clouds blooming like smoke on water. The two of them spread out, shoulder to shoulder, Adam toying with the tab of his coke, Ronan looking like he might want to shake his up and drop it over the side of the roof.

“Are you going to tell me about it?” Adam asks.

“Fuck no.”

Adam shrugs and takes a long pull from the can, waiting.

“I just don’t know… “ Ronan turns his face away. “I might not have come back to you guys. If he’d. Stayed gone.”

Adam nods. “I don’t think there would have been anything to come back to.”

Ronan turns to look at him again, frowning.“You know you’re something without him, Adam.”

Something angry twinges in his chest. The way he said it, like he wasn’t something himself. “Same to you.”

“No but. You’re better at—”

“At what? Losing things? Why? You’ve had more practice.” He doesn’t know why he says it, doesn’t understand why he smashes even his favourite things against walls and cries when they break. Ronan flinches away from him.

“I guess so, asshole. You really know how to rip open old wounds, man, thanks.” He swings his legs over the side of the barn roof but Adam catches his arm.

“Hey, no, jesus. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Ronan stops, all of his muscles tensed for a fight. “Are you going to bring up my drinking next? Maybe my slashed wrists, that’s a fun one.”

Adam flinches. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what? Fucking react to you kicking me when I’m down? What did you expect, Parrish?”

Adam looks down, miserable. “I’m sorry. It’s just, losing Gansey… your dreams hurt me too.”

Ronan looks sick at the thought of it. “I’ll be sure to sleep elsewhere, then.”

Something painful twists in Adam’s throat and his response sputters to nothing before he can say it.

“Don’t go,” he says instead. Ronan looks at him, eyes dark and fists curled.

“I don’t like seeing you hurting, Ronan. I don’t like being reminded of the worst—“ he cuts off, frustrated. “This is stupid. I love you.”

Ronan startles, the tension in his shoulders twisting into something new. “That’s a hell of a time to say that.”

“I don’t know how to make you… I don’t know how to explain to you that this, these messy emotions, this right here, me backing down — it’s all because I fucking love you. I love you.”

Ronan looks dumbfounded, staring out at the lightening sky, his body remembering the urge to leave but the rest of him moored to Adam.

“I love you too,” he says finally, looking at Adam with soft eyes. “Obviously.”

His chest feels riddled with holes, the hull of a ship filling with salt water. His smile feels like it doesn’t quite fit on his face. He knew how Ronan felt, how he _feels_ , but hearing him say it now, with his angry self protection drooping around his shoulders… that’s new. He’s as furious and other as ever, and he’s _in love with Adam_.

“I hate your nightmares,” Adam says bluntly.

Ronan scoffs. “Me too.”

“But I just want you—“

“Me too,” Ronan says, softer. And then, after a moment, “I can’t believe you love me. I can’t believe you said it in the middle of a fight.”

“I can’t believe you’re complaining. Don’t Lynches say I love you by tackling each other?”

“Do you want a demo?” Ronan says, sly, and Adam’s exhausted with happiness at the smile back on his face.

“Later. Not on a rooftop.”

Ronan tucks his feet back up under him, takes Adam’s hand and kisses it. “Wimp.”

“I didn’t mean to say that, before,” Adam tries, and Ronan flicks him in the nose.

“We’re over it. We’re in love now.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “You can stop repeating that any time.”

Ronan hums, faux thoughtful. “I could. Won’t. Might record it and set it as my outgoing message.”

“Fuck you,” Adam says good-naturedly, and he drags Ronan back so they’re tangled together, looking up at cloud veiled stars.

“How about that chicken field trip?” Ronan asks.

“I’m scrapping it. Fighting and feelings are more our speed, anyway.”

“Hmm. We’ll take Opal out to feed them later.”

“Assuming she doesn’t try to eat them first.”

“Hey, she’s pretty good at not biting into anything with a pulse,” Ronan says, defensive.

“I guess, if you don’t count her nipping at my fingers 24/7,” Adam replies drily. Ronan shrugs. Their hands are warmly pressed, the rest of them exposed to the gusty air.

“Hey,” he nudges Adam. “If it were up to me, I’d only have good dreams. For you.”

“I know,” Adam breathes, rolling so that he’s half on top of him, the side of his face pressed softly into the cradle of his sternum. “You don’t always get to choose, though.”

“Yeah, you usually do the choosing for me.”

“Like I could _begin_ to control you,” Adam laughs.

Ronan strokes the hair back from his forehead, looking down at him through thick lashes.

“You make things easier, you know. Like… quiet,” Ronan says, and Adam feels a jolt go through him. Surely, he thinks, _surely_ Gansey didn’t repeat their conversation to Ronan. Which means it’s as simple and honest as it sounds.

“Like the Barns,” Adam whispers. Ronan’s hand stops its restless petting, and smudges a thumb over his hairline.

“Exactly. Things don’t get to me the same way when I’m home.”

“ _You_ get to me, you pest,” Adam says, muffled into Ronan’s shirt, fond all the way through.

Ronan pulls back smiling. “Come on. We’ve got farm stuff to do. Little mouths to feed.”

“Beds to sleep in, clothes to not wear,” Adam grumbles, trying to organize his limbs so that he doesn’t fall when Ronan yanks his hand.

“You don’t have work for hours,” Ronan insists, “We’ve got time.” He disappears over the side of the barn, tattoo soft in the morning sun.

“Sure.” Adam feels overflowing, a tap left on, a pitcher sloshing over. He grins at Ronan’s dark figure, jogging back to the farm house and whooping when Chainsaw careens towards him from the open door. “We’ve got time.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is my kid, I would love if you dropped a comment, man, thanks <3 
> 
> Sorry if there are issues with timelines and characterizations, do me a favour and suspend your disbelief for my research-less ass
> 
> PS count the hand kisses in this story it's like a written I Spy lmao


End file.
